Henry Chappell
|
From "Empire" To know the ranching culture of the Southern Great Plains is to know that it is a world built on grass. Beginning with Paleo hunters pursuing giant Pleistocene game, through the early Apache cultures with their dog-drawn travois, the Comanche and Kiowa, the white buffalo hunters, and, finally, the cattlemen, each culture shaped its world, however slightly, and thereby shaped the culture that followed. The land that now makes up the Waggoner Ranch lies near the heart of former Comanche territory – Comanchería. More particularly, the sandhills and plains of the southeastern corner of the Texas Panhandle, south to the Pease and Wichita Rivers belonged to a Comanche band called The Wanderers, an unusually wide-ranging band among an unusually wide-ranging people. By the end of the Civil War, cattlemen were pushing into the eastern edge of Comanchería, a howling prairie wilderness of vast bison herds, lanky plains lobos, and a fierce people who took a dim view of encroachers. |
|
|
